DIANA
The following morning, I go in search of Lizzie, hoping against hope that I don’t bump into her father.
I grip my laptop tightly, bringing my mind back to my current, much more important issue: the fact that I have no money, no savings, and no idea how to get my business going so I can gain some degree of financial freedom before Lizzie leaves for her travels.
I find her curled up in a corner of the sofa, scrolling on her phone. She unfurls when she sees me, putting her phone down beside her.
“When are you going to Argentina?” I ask, glancing at my watch as though her flight is leaving this evening.
“The week before Christmas. Why?”
I plop down onto the floor at her feet, resting my laptop on the coffee table, trying to control the latent panic that’s humming in my system, threatening to overrun it. “So that’s when I’m leaving too, right?”
That sounded casual. Well done, Diana. I’m not panicking. I can handle this.
“Yeah. It makes sense that you’d leave when I do.
Otherwise, it would be weird, wouldn’t it?
If you were here with Dad and I wasn’t?” My stomach flips as Lizzie, oblivious to my internal turmoil, bites down on her thumbnail.
“Will you be all right by then? It doesn’t give you long to get things sorted. A couple of months.”
I open the laptop and bring up the relevant files, hoping she won’t notice the trembling in my hands.
“I’ve been trying to work out my financial projections.
” I click into the spreadsheet I was analysing in bed.
Beside me, Lizzie peers over my shoulder.
“If I start charging for making promotional book content and marketing videos, I should be earning five hundred quid a month by then. Of course, I’ll have to rebuild my audience, and I don’t know how long th—”
“Wait. Did you say five hundred? That’s not going to…
you won’t… Let me see.” She moves to sit beside me on the floor and scans through my spreadsheet.
“You can’t live off that. Not in London.
What can you rent for five hundred quid?
Geez, that’s like one shoe. Maybe a pair.
” She turns horrified eyes on me. “And then you have to pay bills and, I dunno…” She wiggles her fingers in the air.
“Other stuff. Food. Whatever.” She scrolls frantically back up to the top of the spreadsheet again.
“What is this? How have you even determined this?”
I sit back on my heels, rubbing a hand over my eyes. “My projections.”
“They look like shit.”
I huff. “Thanks for the support.”
Lizzie’s brow crinkles. “Seriously. Fix it.”
“I don’t know how. I frittered away so much money on trying to make this influencer thing work.”
“But it sounded like you were already doing well. You had all those followers,” Lizzie encourages. “Your huge mailing list.”
My shoulders slump. “I was manifesting, you know?”
Lizzie rests a hand on my shoulder, and asks, very softly, “You mean you were lying?”
“No. Not lying. I really did have a big mailing list, and you know I had a ton of followers. But that was it, really. Numbers alone don’t mean much if you don’t know what to do with them.
” I sigh. Admitting my own failures makes me feel terrible.
“I was talking a big game. I was gonna be someone, make it big… I was going to succeed. But all I did was spend, spend, spend, and nothing came in.” I cover my face with my hands, mumbling, “My dad’s right.
I’m good for nothing. I can’t make a life on my own. I can’t be independent. I’m so stupid.”
Lizzie grips both my shoulders and shakes me. “No. No, you’re not. You’re ambitious and driven, you can make this work. You know what you need?”
“What?”
“A mentor. Someone to show you what’s possible. Someone who believes in you.”
I let out a wry chuckle. “Like who?”
Lizzie flashes me one of her big grins. “My dad.”
I stiffen. Oh, no. No, no, no. I can’t be in close physical proximity with her dad. I need to pretend he doesn’t exist. I need him to think I don’t exist.
It’s the only way I can get through this situation.
“It’s exactly his thing,” Lizzie continues, bobbing up and down a little, clearly excited by this idea of hers.
“He loves this shit. Turning businesses around. Taking them apart and putting them back together. Helping fledgling businesses take flight. If your ideas have potential, he’ll see it. It’s what he does best.”
“Oh, no. I’m sure he’s far too busy. I’m sure he’s—”
Down the corridor, the lift announces its arrival with a churning sound, and the metallic sweep of the opening doors follows. We both turn to the noise.
“Speak of the devil,” Lizzie says, pressing a hand on my shoulder and standing.
Rafe enters the room, halting when he sees us. He’s dressed in gym clothes: a white t-shirt soaked with sweat and plastered to his chest. His dark hair is pushed off his face, and he’s wearing grey shorts. It’s a good look, and I try not to stare.
But oh, my God, this man is hot.
“Wow, you’re sweaty,” Lizzie says to him, screwing her face up in evident disgust.
“Tends to happen in the gym,” he replies, gripping the hem of his shirt and lifting it to wipe his face.
My stomach somersaults as I catch sight of the firm, tanned muscle beneath, the V on his hips and the happy little trail of dark hair that disappears into the waistband of his shorts.
A raging heat ignites between my legs, and I fist my hands in my lap, dropping my gaze to my knees, hoping Lizzie didn’t catch me staring.
“I’m headed for a shower,” he explains, turning in the direction of his bedroom.
Lizzie scrambles to her feet. “Wait, hold on. We were just talking about you.”
“You were?” he says, pausing, his gaze flicking between us. I search his face for some hint of recognition when he looks at me, but there’s still nothing.
“Yeah. Diana has this business venture she’s trying to get off the ground, and the financials aren’t stacking up. I thought you could help her. Can you take a look at what she’s planning and see if there’s a way to make it work?”
His features scrunch a little. “Now?”
“Oh, no,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to. It’s okay. I can—”
He glances at his watch. “I have a few minutes. Are you set up as a sole trader or a limited partnership?”
“Umm, well… I don’t…” His eyebrow rises as I stumble over my words. “Neither. I’m just… me.”
“Just you.” He repeats my words so slowly that I cringe at how stupid they sound. “Right.”
“Dad,” Lizzie reprimands softly, and he gives a slight nod to acknowledge her.
“Who’s your accountant?” he asks me.
I open my mouth, then shut it again.
“Well?” he asks.
“Erm, I don’t have one. My dad did all my finances.”
His silence is a beat too long. “Okay. I’ll put you in touch with someone to talk you through what you need to sort out first. What’s the business?”
“Books.”
His brow creases. “Books?”
“And fashion.” I shrivel as his gaze trips down my body, taking in the slouchy tracksuit I’m wearing, causing his eyebrow to arch even higher this time. “I’m a social media influencer. Or, I was. I need to work out how to monetise things to create a consistent and reliable cash flow.”
That sounded good, didn’t it?
Fuck. Did it?
There’s no spark of comprehension in his eyes, and I can tell that what I’ve just said means nothing to him. “Is it there on your laptop?”
“Yes.”
“Bring it,” he commands, tipping his head towards his office down the hall.
My hands are instantly clammy. “Now?”
“Yes, now,” he says, slightly impatiently.
I turn wide eyes on Lizzie, and she waves me off with both hands. “Go, go, go, before he changes his mind,” she hisses.
By the time I’ve gathered my laptop and stood, he’s already disappeared down the corridor.
His office door is open, so I follow him in. The room is warm, but not stuffy, and on one side, a huge window looks out over the park. The walls are lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves full of leather bound books. I want to examine them, but Rafe gets straight to business.
“Show me,” he says, standing behind his large mahogany desk and nodding at the laptop in my hands.
How the hell he manages to emanate total control and power, even in his sweaty gym kit, I have no idea, but it’s working. Obediently, I scurry over and prop my laptop where he can see it.
“Can I?” I ask, gesturing to the cushioned leather chair behind his desk, and he nods, so I sit.
Beside me, he leans closer so he can see what I’m doing, pressing the heels of both hands on the desktop, his fingers trailing over the edge.
I glance at them, and a sensation of heat compresses my insides, funnelling all the warmth in my body between my legs.
I can’t concentrate.
“What am I looking at?” he says, and as he leans over my shoulder, I’m hit with a waft of his post-workout smell.
The scent of his exertion is so familiar that a swirling dizziness whooshes through me. Tangled sheets, sweat-slicked skin, hot breath, soft lips. And his hands, everywhere.
I want to inhale until my lungs pop, or get to my knees, slide my palms up his muscular thighs, and beg him for more. Instead, I take a few rapid breaths in an attempt to steady myself. I had no idea being this close to him would make me feel so frenzied.
It’s not supposed to feel like this.
Or maybe it’s supposed to feel exactly like this.
I clench my fists and flex my fingers as I prepare to get started.
“I… uh… here…” I raise a shaky finger to the screen, where I’ve put my anticipated income. “And then over here…” I shift across to the expenditure. His face is so close to mine, I can hear the low rustle of his breathing in my ear.
I turn my head the tiniest bit and watch him, so intent and focused on the computer screen. Only a few inches keep me from feeling the gentle scrape of his stubble against my skin. The craziest urge to nuzzle against it possesses me.
He tilts his head in my direction, like he knows I’m no longer concentrating on the computer. Our eyes lock. And I mean lock. I’m frozen, staring into those dark pools the way I did when I orgasmed in his arms.